Polished the fuchs

80sctarga · 01-04-2003, 02:48 PM

During my winter break I had allot of time to kill so I decided to take on my wheels. After admiring the Fuchs of pjv911, 89911, and old_skul (just to name a few) I decided on the full polished look. It took me a little longer than I thought it would......Three 12 hour days! Not bad I guess considering I have only one good hand at the moment (broke 2 bones in my right hand attempting to tighten my fan belt......wrench slipped off........long story. You get the picture.) Anyway, what do you guys think? I know they are only 6 and 7's, but 8 or 9's for the rear are a little out of my price range right now.
before

after

after...sorry about the sun glare (its sunny and 78 here in WA! Ya right!

john walker's workshop · 01-04-2003, 03:32 PM

that's a lot of elbow grease! especially with one hand tied behind your back. nice work. i'm too lazy, i pay someone to do it.

efhughes3 · efhughes3's Garage

Very nice! My hat is off to you for taking the time to do this. I bought some "pre-polished" on ebay, 'cuz I'm too lazy!

rfuerst911sc · 01-04-2003, 04:43 PM

Looks great,nice job,so how did you do it?Did you chemically strip the paint?How did you polish them?Did you clear coat them after polishing?Thanks

don911 · don911's Garage

Looks great!
I bought my 7's and 8's already polished. I just bought a set of track wheels that I'm thinking about polishing the padels and rings. I'm interested in what you did to get the paint and anodizing off. I don't want the mess of stripping so I'm thinking about buffing wheels but I can't find any drills that have enough RPM's.

bob hodges · 01-04-2003, 07:36 PM

I am with John ,,,,,that is a great job but way out of my bench. I had mine done here in Phoenix and they look great ..I will assure you that yours was the better deal money wise.

curlesw · curlesw's Garage

80sctarga looks great. I to just finished the same project but I went with just polished paddles. I think polished wheels look better on cars with darker paint. Any plans to polish the lug nuts?

Wayne
83 SC

80sctarga · 09:30 PM

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80sctarga · 01-04-2003, 09:30 PM

Thanks people for all the great feedback. First I took the paint off with some aircraft paint remover (takes several applications with alot of scrubing with a fine wire brush in between coats. also covering the rims with a heavy garbage bag kept the remover from drying out to quick.) Once ALL the black paint was gone I used the old "easy off" oven cleaner trick to remove the anodizing, (2 or 3 applications to do this) letting it set 30 to 40 mins. before more scrubing (dont worry non of this "pits" the wheels.) After ALL the anodizing was off I sanded (until uniform color) with 220 grit, then 400, then 1000, then 1500 (holy crap it was alot of work) Then I used Turtle wax polishing compound with the buffer, (they were pretty glossy after this but still wasnt right.) I then switched bonnets on the polisher and went with Mothers aluminum polish (then they looked like a mirror.) Looking back I could have saved some time in several areas ie.....Doing all the stripping at once. Doing all the sanding at once. Then doing all the polishing etc. I did them one at a time and it SUCKED!
But it was worth it. They look better than they did.
Thanks again

89911 · 01-05-2003, 09:02 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by 80sctarga
Looking back I could have saved some time in several areas ie.....Doing all the stripping at once. Doing all the sanding at once. Then doing all the polishing etc. I did them one at a time and it SUCKED!
But it was worth it. They look better than they did.
Thanks again

Yes, but at least you got some quick feedback that your work was not in vain. I'm sure you'll agree that doing each step on all four at a time, you think you'll never finish. Plus, its good to do one all the way to completion to see where you can cut time. Any power tool you can get your hands on will help! Nice job!